You have to have seen this Monty Python sketch to understand the parallels I’m about to make between a dead parrot and the sanctity of marriage. My mom’s claim that God is okay with her divorce and planned remarriage is as ridiculous as Michael Palin claiming that the parrot is just sleeping.The pet shop owner, Michael Palin, makes the ridiculous claim that the bird is still alive, while John Cleese’s character repeatedly points out the obvious: the parrot is dead. No matter what you say to defend your position, it’s dead. You can’t make it alive just by saying it is. And what cracks me up the most is when Palin goes off on the beautiful plumage, in a lame attempt to distract Cleese from the bird’s vital signs, at which Cleese rightly exclaims, “The plumage don’t enter into it!”That’s just what I want to exclaim to my mom right now. She tells me that I haven’t met her new boyfriend, so how can I judge him? She tells me that his first wife cheated on him, and when he divorced her his church told him to remarry her, so he did, and she continued to cheat on him. So he divorced her again and decided that “The Church” had its doctrines on divorce wrong, and that divorce must be okay. And she tells me that he is “such a Godly man, Kel, I put him right up there with your husband in that respect [agh, pedestal much?], he just really loves the Lord and knows the Word.”Well, sorry Mom, but he doesn’t enter into it. The issue at hand is you, your divorce, and your lack of Biblical support for it. No matter how much you try to distract me onto tangential issues (for example, his reasons for divorce), your divorce is sin. If you remarry, you are committing adultery, which is sin. No matter how you present it, no matter how you try to twist the Bible, no matter how Dad treated you all those years, your divorce and remarriage is sin. The parrot is dead. Period.
For the record, my dad never cheated on my mom. He was a less-then-stellar husband, to be sure, and had some very serious personal demons to deal with, but none of those is grounds for divorce according to the Bible. And what gripes my hisband the most is the fact that for the last twenty-five years my mom has defended her position of not divorcing her husband on the same Bible verses that I’m presenting to her now.
Posted on February 7th, 2007 by Dove
Filed under: Rants
Ah; now I see the background for your comment over on my blog. This is a tough situation; I can’t imagine watching my parents go through that.
I’ve lifted you up, that you’ll have wisdom on how to deal with your mom and handle all of this, particularly in relation to your kiddos.
Jess
How sad for your mother to have such a judgmental daughter.
Becky, it’s a very sad misconception that we as Christians are not to judge one another, but we can judge non-believers. In fact, the opposite is true. 1 Corinthians 5:11-13 tells us that God judges those outside the church, but that we are to call other Christians to the mat for their sin. That’s where the whole idea of holding one another accountable comes from. We show grace to the unbeliever in hopes of inspiring repentance, knowing that God will later judge them if they do not repent. And we identify harmful sin in other Christian’s life in hopes of bringing about repentance and turning from the sin. To allow the sin is to invite infection into the Body of Christ, and Paul tells us to remove the persistently unrepentant sinning believer from the church to prevent such infection.
Now, if you want to argue on whether or not divorce because one person is unhappy is sin or not, that’s a whole different story. I’d invite you to study the Bible and it’s position on marriage and divorce. I have studied it in depth since this whole business entered our lives and it’s my belief that my mother’s reason for divorce, “Because God wants me to be happy,” was not a Biblical excuse. Therefore, her divorce was sin, and her remarriage is also sin.
You will note that this post is categorized under Rants. In my approach to her I have spoken and acted in love and then in sorrow at her unrepentance. I truly want my mom to turn from her sin, because I love her and I desire reconciliation. But I started this blog partly as a place to sound off my frustrations, which I’ve done, so you’ve only seen the frustration and less of the love behind it.
You’re in good company though. Probably 85% of the folks around us believe I’m being harsh and judgmental. These days if you stand for any kind of absolute truth you’re considered a bigot, because tolerance is the new gospel of our culture. Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll stick with the Bible and absolute truth.
What is sad is how quickly people are to judge others as being “judgmental” (also exceedingly ironic, I know!). What could very well be more sad than that is when we Christians listen to those people and then directly avoid confronting others in obvious sin out of fear of such culturally acceptable judgments. When we do this we are in sin ourselves because we are loving ourselves in how we might look or be taken more than we do our loved one acting in destructive sin, or more than we love Jesus in obeying Him (which, from my study, I believe is the objective here!).
Christians confront fellow Christians in sin without compromise firstly because they are commanded to (Matt 18, starting in v15 is another example) and they love God and therefore love to obey Him, and secondly because they love their friends and family and can’t stand watching them willingly disobey the same God they’re supposed to love just as much. There is little that is more painful than watching someone you love be held back or torn apart by their own sin, and how the vast majority of believers can be content to sit and watch or even run away from such a loved one is incomprehensible to me. How someone could even suggest that option is incomprehensible to me. Do they not know or experience the fear of God and then the passion for Him to run after Him and His holiness? No… no… we’re too busy ironically judging those people as being “judgmental”…
All this to say that I’m very thankful for you in what you are doing because I see your love for Jesus in it and I see your love for your mom in it, in the correct order… and that’s as sweet as it is rare for my eyes to see. Thanks.